Episode Summary: This episode is focused on a discussion about food waste. It is selected from episode 36 (Thoughts on Food) 

Leekei, Cat and Mary Elizabeth talked about Food, Food Waste and Sustainability and how their individual journeys have been influenced by their parents and how the Second World War and later events had a bearing on how their parents both respected and developed a thriftiness for food.

To listen to the full episode of ‘Thoughts on Food’ go here

For more information on the project and to order your copy of the Carbon Almanac, visit thecarbonalmanac.org

Want to join in the conversation?

Visit thecarbonalmanac.org/podcasts and send us a voice message on this episode or any other climate-related ideas and perspectives.

Don’t Take Our Word For It, Look It Up!

You can read about food in relation to this episode, in The Carbon Almanac on pages 116, 201 and 121. 

Or look in the footnotes sections:

https://thecarbonalmanac.org/067/

https://thecarbonalmanac.org/599/

https://thecarbonalmanac.org/the-problem-with-leftovers/

https://thecarbonalmanac.org/260/

https://thecarbonalmanac.org/eating-our-way-forward/

https://thecarbonalmanac.org/022/

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Featuring Carbon Almanac Contributors Leekei Tang, Mary Elizabeth Sheehan and Cat Barnard.

Leekei is a fashion business founder, a business coach, an international development expert and podcaster from Paris, France.  

Based in Fort Worth, Texas, Mary Elizabeth is an author and maker of things, including clothing, adventures, and food and a pie maker extraordinaire.

Cat is a small business owner living near London in the UK, her work developed from a concern about Climate Change and she advises businesses on the case for Carbon Reduction at Work.

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The CarbonSessions Podcast is produced and edited by Leekei Tang, Steve Heatherington and Rob Slater.

He shared on one of our conversation

threads some data that came

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from Project Draw down about

the extent to which food waste.

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A contributing factor

to, uh, carbon emissions.

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And that kind of catalyzed a conversation

about the waste in the food system,

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pre kind of supermarket, pre how

it appears to us as consumers, but

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then also a conversation about the

waste that happens once we buy food.

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, and that was really where we then

started a very vibrant conversation

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about recipes and family and parents and

how it's really only been in the last.

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20 or 30 years that we've become

quite so proger and quite so

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lackadaisical about food waste.

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So here we are.

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Yes.

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Yeah.

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And definitely there's a lot of waste

up the chain and we can certainly put

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some pressure on some systems, but

I've tried to focus on my own home,

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like reducing my own personal waste.

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And then right before we had this call,

so we had this call, And last night I

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was making dinner and it called for white

wine vinegar and I had, I don't know why

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the bottle was even back in the pantry.

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Honestly, there was nothing left in it.

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But the mother was there, you know,

the little fermentation thingy.

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And I had a bottle of wine that was

really not white wine that was not

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very drinkable, so I just decided.

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Against Julia Child advice.

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Make it my cooking wine cuz she

says you shouldn't ever cook

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with the wine you wouldn't drink.

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But I bought it, it was gross.

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I was like, well it's cooking wine.

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So then I put the bottle from the white

wine vinegar over in the recycle area

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and I had my white wine and, and I

was like, Wait, I could just add the

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mother to this bottle of white wine.

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and start all the whole

process over again.

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And it just made me laugh because

I knew we were having this

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conversation about food waste.

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I was like, Oh, I don't have to buy

another bottle of white wine vinegar for

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maybe another year cuz I'm making my own.

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That's.

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So funny that you would mention that

because you know, I think a lot of us have

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started to do different stuff since the

pandemic and to live a bit differently.

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But one of the things that we've done

in our house, so my bro, I think my

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brother and my mother-in-law at some

point during one of the lockdowns

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started to talk to us about Kafi, which.

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A fermented milk . Yeah, your face leaky.

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It's funny.

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And so I bought some starter packs and

actually my husband got really into it.

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It's not my cup of tea.

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I don't drink dairy.

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It's not, I don't eat yogurt.

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It's not something that

appeals to me particularly.

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But we went through all of these

little starter packs and that was that.

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And I said, Should we get some more?

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And he said, We can't get some more.

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And this is what he does now, which

I think is really interesting.

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And of that vein, so it, we now get

our milk delivered to the doorstep

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from a local farm because we just felt.

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At the start of the pandemic that we

needed to be supporting local producers.

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I don't know what it's like in France

and in the United States, but if

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you buy milk from the supermarket,

it comes in plastic, whereas to the

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doorstep, it comes in glass bottles.

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So all of those good reasons.

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However, from time to time, if

you are not completely on top

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of your milk consumption, a

bottle will start to taste a bit.

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So anyway, when that happens now,

My husband Tim, literally just takes

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a dollar of yogurt, live yogurt.

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And puts it into a sauce pan with the

pint of milk and lets it do its thing.

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And then, yeah, several days later,

he's got another batch of kafi.

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So it's like yogurt.

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It's a fermented milk drink that I

think originates from India, actually.

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Yeah, I believe so.

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Mm-hmm.

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, I don't know much about it because

as I say, it's not my thing.

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But I do think it is interesting.

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You know what you can do with odds and.

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I think you and I had a

conversation, Mary Elizabeth, about

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composting, or was it chickens?

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I can't remember.

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. Both are like it's coin toss.

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Which one we were talking about chickens.

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I've got worms under my sink.

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Composting.

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I've got chickens I've got

who eat literally anything.

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Uh, well, I mean, in theory the

composting thing is a bit mad

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because here in the uk, and by the

way, it varies county by county.

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Some counties take curbside food waste and

take it off to a big, Well, we all thought

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it would an anaerobic digester, hopefully,

but it turns out that some of the county

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councils are also chucking food waste into

big incinerator, which is not so great.

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Anyway.

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In the pandemic and the

aftermath of the first lockdown.

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We had a Laurie driver shortage here

in the uk, so a lot of the Laurie

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drivers were here from Europe.

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They all went home and we had this

massive shortage of HGV drivers, and

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that meant that a lot of the people

that are previously worked for the

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council went and worked for the private

sector and learned more money, and we

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were left without refuse waste for a.

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And I just said to my

husband, You know what?

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I'm not putting all my food

waste into the mainstream bin.

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Why don't we, We've got the

space for it in the garden.

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Why don't we get composting?

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So we bought those rotating ones,

you know, the ones that fill them

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up, put the grass waste in as well.

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And it's been tremendous.

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It's been absolutely, I mean, it's a bit,

you know, it's right down the bottom of

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the garden, so it doesn't really matter.

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Yeah, the comp within like two, three

months, you've got proper kind of garden

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center grade compost for your fertilizer,

flower beds, and your vegetable patch.

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Caused me to think about kind of

the cycle of life and fermenting

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things as one for, for instance,

are actually really helpful for you.

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You know, this whole circle of life.

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Thing I find quite fascinating.

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Yeah.

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And we've removed ourselves from that, or

we've systemically been removed from that.

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Um, Yeah.

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And I think once we see it, so I really, I

mean, we used to tease my mother for being

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so cheap and frugal, but I'm grateful for

all the things that she has taught me now.

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